“You now have a forum here at Fox News where you can immediately neutralize ’60 Minutes’,” Mr. O’Reilly said.

Outside of this metaphorical lining up of media armies, Palin’s appearance was fairly unremarkable, though not what you’d call hyper-articulate. (At one point she talked about “uncomfortableness” with administration policies.)

Palin said that Obama’s poll numbers are falling because Americans don’t feel as safe as they did, and don’t like health care reform, and have finally figured out what Obama stands for.

“This is not the representative government we thought we’d voted in,” she said.

She criticized recent comments made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about the president’s race. “A lot of us don’t think along those lines that somebody’s skin tone would be a criteria for president,” she said.

O’Reilly, as his style, kept stomping on the end of her answers to ask further questions, such as what she would do about Iran.

“The time for talking about sanctions, we have passed that,” said Palin, though she added later that “obviously we need to adhere to those sanctions ... a military attack needs to be our very last option”.

Palin also said she was “so thankful for the tea party movement”, and added that she would not gain financially from addressing an upcoming tea party event.

O’Reilly then asked how she felt her first appearance as a Fox contributor had gone.

“I couldn’t ask for anything better. I was with the big man on campus,” she said.

“Who’s that?” said O’Reilly, milking the moment. (His program dominates the other news shows in that time slot, after all.)